Tesco Fully Iced Madeira Cake

...most of my shopping in Tesco this is where I headed to find my cake. Also I had bought this cake before so knew that is was of good quality.

Tesco have a choice of 'occasion cakes', from Thomas the tank Engine to Busty boobs, but I decided to go for the more traditional style of a plain iced cake. There is a choice of sponge or fruit and although I personally prefer fruit I went for sponge as I thought this was more likely to be to ...
...Price~~~
There were two choices of size and I went for the 7" one which cost me £6.49. For this I got a Madeira cake covered in soft and royal icing and left ready to eat or decorate as desired. It comes in quite a plain box, but with a large seethrough area which means you can check the cake out before buying.

~~~The Cake~~~
The cake is a soft Madeira cake that is sandwiched together with plum and raspberry jam ... more

To celebrate our tenth anniversary earlier this year we held a party. Most of the food was easily sorted, but a good party needs a good cake. Although I can cook fairly well myself I am absolutely useless at decorating, so I decided to go for the easy version and buy a cake.

Since I do most of my shopping in Tesco this is where I headed to find my cake. Also I had bought this cake before so knew that is was of good quality.

Tesco have a choice of 'occasion cakes', from Thomas the tank Engine to Busty boobs, but I decided to go for the more traditional style of a plain iced cake. There is a choice of sponge or fruit and although I personally prefer fruit I went for sponge as I thought this was more likely to be to more peoples taste.

~~~Size and Price~~~
There were two choices of size and I went for the 7" one which cost me £6.49. For this I got a Madeira cake covered in soft and royal icing and left ready to eat or decorate as desired. It comes in quite a plain box, but with a large seethrough area which means you can check the cake out before buying.

~~~The Cake~~~
The cake is a soft Madeira cake that is sandwiched together with plum and raspberry jam and butter cream. Covering the top and sides is a soft icing and then on the top is delicate swirls of royal icing. The cake could easily be left like this or decorated further to suit the occasion.

~~~Ingredients and nutrition~~~
This contains a bit more than what you would expect in a home made version of Madeira cake but then it has also been made and designed to last a few weeks not only on the shelf but in your home. The cake I picked up had about five weeks on the date and I think this was probably a fairly new batch that had come in as I had checked only a week before and they did not go as far as the date I required it.

Comparing it to other similar products it seemed to have nothing to really worry about in it but with key ingredients of MILK, WHEAT, GLUTEN and EGG, It would certainly not be suitable for anyone that has any allergies of that type. There is no mention of NUTS in the list of ingredients and no mention of the cake being made in an environment with nuts so sounds like that is safe. It also claims to be suitable for VEGETARIANS, and looking at the list again this seems to be so.

As for nutrition, well it is an average of 220 calories a slice, with high amounts of carbohydrates, sugar and fat. But what do you expect……It's a cake!

~~~Decorating~~~
As I said it is a plain decorated cake, ready for you to add to if you wish. This is just what I did. I didn't want to over do it as I do like the plain look but just wanted to add a touch of colour. So I bought a packet of pink icing flowers, and using a small amount of icing added half a dozen to the cake. It made quite a change and really gave it a lift.

~~~Serving~~~
The great thing about this cake is that it comes on a silver cake board, about three or four centimetres larger than the cake, so it is really easy to serve. Just simply slip it out of the box and then either leave your guests to help themselves or slice and wrap to take home. I decide to leave it on the table so people could help themselves if they wanted but as usual no one wants to be the one to put a knife to it. So as the guests started departing later in the evening I started to slice. According to the box the cake contains 16 servings. Having a few more people than that to feed I did make the slices as thin as possible, without making them too thin that it all fell apart. I can't remember the exact amounts but I think I managed around 22 slices in all. So, at 30p a slice, quite a bargain.

~~~The Smell and taste Test~~~
One thing I did remember to do was save me a piece. After all it is no good recommending a cake simply on looks. It was a day or two before I got round to eating it, but it survived well being wrapped in film in the fridge.

It smelt very sweet and just as I would expect a cake to. Not overpowering but enough to get me dribbling.

The cake itself was very soft and moist, and almost melted in the mouth. The Jam was a lovely flavour, with not too many pips thank goodness. The Butter cream too was really creamy and unlike a few other cakes I have tried not too sickly. The amount of Jam (4%) and Butter cream (8%) added was just right to enhance the cake without overpowering it. On the top and sides of the cake was a lovely soft icing (35%) It was about .5cm thick which was plenty, as it can be quite sugary. It had a slight chewy texture to it, and worked well with the hard crunch of the small swirls of royal icing (6%) on top, and the flowers that I had added.

~~~Overall~~~
I would certainly recommend this cake and will no doubt be buying it again for another occasion.

The great thing is how versatile it can be. The fact it comes in various sizes means that you could easily team it up with some of the fruit cakes that are iced in an identical way and use it as a wedding cake with the option of both fruit and sponge for guests. The price too would be a fraction of that from professional bakers.

Or you could simply add some figures to the board, and maybe a couple on top of the cake to make one ideal for children. The figures could easily be removed and perhaps reused. A nice idea for a young boy would be to perhaps use some liquorice shoelaces to create a train track around the outside, and a small train to complete the look. For a girl maybe cover three various sized mini rolls with icing, add a small turret to each and a couple of sweets for windows and there you have a beautiful castle on top of your cake fit for any princess.

But you could always just leave it as it comes, which is just as nice, and tasty!

 

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